Loyalty systems (also known as promotion or incentive systems) were developed, in part, to not only motivate the consumer to purchase a particular item, but also to promote consumer loyalty to a merchant, transaction card or service provider. Generally, such programs reward consumers for buying a particular product or conducting repeat business with the same merchant by issuing a coupon, distributing a loyalty card or issuing loyalty points. Whether the coupon or card is issued directly or in exchange for loyalty points, consumers typically accumulate various coupons, loyalty cards and certificates from different merchants wherein the coupons often include, for example, purchase requirements or date restrictions. As such, consumers typically must wait to receive the certificate or card in the mail, spend time organizing the various coupons from different merchants and determining which product to purchase in order to obtain the benefit of a particular coupon. Moreover, consumers typically retain the coupons along with their other forms of payment in order to remind them to use the coupons when they are shopping at a particular merchant. Furthermore, the expiration dates must be monitored in order to avoid losing the ability to utilize the coupon and the coupons often can only be redeemed during one purchase transaction, so the full amount of the coupon must be used at once or the remaining value is usually lost.
In addition to coupons or certificates, merchants may issue loyalty points to a consumer account associated with a merchant specific loyalty card. However, because numerous merchants participate in loyalty programs, consumers often retain many loyalty cards, each having a different loyalty account number along with different rules and requirements. Moreover, after accumulating loyalty points, the consumer then redeems the loyalty points in various ways, including exchanging the loyalty points for additional goods and services. For example, the rewards may be selected from a merchant approved list or a merchant redemption catalog. The loyalty points are usually calculated using a predetermined formula or ratio that relates a consumer's purchase volume (i.e., in terms of money value or some other volume parameter) to a certain number of loyalty points. For example, loyalty points may be issued on a one-for-one basis with each dollar that a consumer spends on particular goods and services. Loyalty points may also be issued based upon a consumer meeting a pre-defined rule such as, frequency of purchases at a merchant or frequency of purchasing a particular product. However, the consumer needs to remember or keep track of loyalty point balances and reward options from various merchants.
One well-known example of a consumer incentive program is a “frequent flyer” program which usually issues an airline specific frequent flyer card, then rewards airline passengers with “mileage points” based upon the distances that the passengers fly with a particular airline. The mileage points may then be redeemed for free airfare or free car rentals. Other incentive award programs are designed to induce usage of particular financial instruments, such as credit cards or debit cards, by accumulating loyalty points or dollar value points based upon the volume of purchases made using the particular financial instrument. These types of programs may be designed such that clients of the financial institution accumulate loyalty points which can be redeemed for selected goods or services or, alternatively, consumers accumulate points which have a dollar value which can be applied toward a credit or debit balance, depending on whether the instrument is a credit or debit instrument, for example.
Because of the numerous coupons, certificates, and loyalty cards that are typically retained by consumers, a need exists to consolidate the loyalty programs from various merchants into a centralized database wherein, for each consumer, the database can monitor loyalty point balances for various merchants. Moreover, a need exists for the consumer to access the database using one code or loyalty account number.
In addition to the distribution and use of coupons, certificates, loyalty cards and loyalty points, a need exists for a more efficient system of distributing vouchers to consumers. Consumers typically receive in the mail numerous coupon booklets, rebate checks, and envelopes full of post card advertisements. Many times, the consumer will not review the entire packet of promotions; rather, the consumer will simply toss the envelope of promotions in the garbage without reviewing the contents. If the consumer spends the time reviewing the various promotions, the consumer may only select a very small subset of promotions to save for later use. The consumer will often save the few promotions in a drawer or folder which usually causes the consumer to forget about the promotions. Moreover, the sponsors of these promotions often do not have an adequate method for monitoring, tracking and analyzing the success of such promotions. For example, the promotions may be given by the recipient to a different consumer which utilizes the promotion, so the sponsors would be misled about the incentive effect of the promotion on the target recipient group. Furthermore, in some situations, the consumer may unethically attempt to copy or reproduce the promotion in order to wrongly obtain repeated benefits from the promotion. As such, a need exists for an improved system for distributing a voucher to consumers that results in increased use of the vouchers and decreased fraud.